Yves here. No matter how bad you think it is with Trump, it’s worse. RFK, Jr. continues (like so many Trump appointees) to embarrass himself by trying to defend Trump’s abjectly false claims, as opposed to trying to distance himself from them. Here, the topic is Trump claims of drug price reductions so large that the only way for them to be accurate would be if the government was paying patients to take them.
The focus on Trump’s poor mathematical skills obscures a point made by Elizabeth Warren below: that Trump’s supposed bargain-forcing TrumpRx in fact often sells drugs at prices well above those on the market now.
By Brad Reed, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday tried to defend President Donald Trump’s mathematically absurd claims about prescription drug prices by saying the president has his own unique method of calculating percentages.
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) grilled Kennedy about the president’s repeated false claims that he has slashed the prices of prescription drugs by as much as 600%, which would mean that pharmaceutical companies are paying consumers to take their medications.
“President Trump has his own way of calculating,” Kennedy replied. “There’s two ways of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600% reduction.”
RFK Jr: "President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction." pic.twitter.com/MjDNADqc8p
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 22, 2026
In fact, such a drop in price would represent a 98.3% reduction, less than one-sixth the size of the president’s claims. A 600% reduction in the price of a $600 drug would mean that drug manufacturer paid consumers $3,000 every time they picked up their prescription.
Kit Yates, a mathematician at the University of Bath, marveled at Kennedy’s attempts to create an alternate version of arithmetic.
“We’ve known for a while that the USA’s current regime have been out for science, but I never thought they would try to mess with math!” Yates wrote in a social media post. “You can’t just redefine how you calculate percentages.”
In addition to exposing Kennedy’s apparent ignorance of elementary mathematics, Warren shined a light on how the TrumpRx website misleads consumers into thinking they’re being offered bargains on prescription drugs that are available elsewhere in generic varieties.
In once instance, Warren noted that TrumpRx is selling a brand-name heartburn medication for $200, whereas a generic version of the same drug is available at Costco for $16. Warren also highlighted a heart arrhythmia drug for sale on TrumpRx for $336, even though a generic version of the drug is available at Costco for $12.
Warren added that, in exchange for making select brand-name drugs available on the TrumpRx website, pharmaceutical companies have gotten exemptions from the president’s 100% tariffs on imported patented medicines.
“Think about that: Big Pharma makes billions of dollars in tariff relief by listing their drugs on TrumpRx, and then they don’t even lower the costs on many of these drugs,” she said. “That is a great deal for Big Pharma.”
Warren’s analysis of TrumpRx’s pricing scheme echoes a March report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which found that the president’s prescription drug website offered genuinely lower prices on “exactly one” of the 54 medications listed.
CAP also found that nearly one-third of the drugs available on the TrumpRx website have generic alternatives that were cheaper than what was being offered, and that the website made no mention of this.
Reuters reported in December that at least 350 branded medications are set for price hikes in 2026, including “vaccinesagainst Covid, RSV, and shingles,” as well as the “blockbuster cancer treatment Ibrance.”
Later in the Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ridiculed Kennedy for claiming that, under Trump’s leadership, “the American people are now paying the lowest costs in the world rather than the highest for prescription drugs.”
“That is an absurd statement,” Sanders said. “Nobody in the world believes that.”
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According to OECD data, per capita expenditures on retail pharmaceuticals (outside hospital spending) in purchase power parity terms in 2023 (admittedly before Trump the Second, though things won’t have changed that much in later years) were the highest in the US among OECD countries (1713$) 2,24 times above OECD average. Followed by Germany in 2nd place (1158$).
Expenditures are of course the combination of amounts or doses purchased multiplied by prices. If one goes by The Global Use of Medicines (which can be downloaded for free), exhibit 3, page 7, in 2023 the Defined Daily Doses per capita (DDD) by geographic regions, was centred at about 1100 DDD in Western Europe (surpassed only by Japan) while in North America was centred at about 800 DDD). This probably includes hospital treatments so it is not the same as retail pharmaceuticals but it strongly suggests that the differences observed in retail expenditures by the OECD study depend more on prices (in PPP terms) than on doses purchased. I can easily agree with Sanders.
What a f****** embarrassment. Percentages are typically first covered in middle school. Is it really possible that neither Kennedy nor Trump understand basic arithmetic? And Kennedy illustrates either his or Trump’s ignorance in front of Congress?
Only in Trump U. I guess.
I can’t even.
Pretty sure that when Kennedy was recruited into the Trump team, that they thought of him as some sort of “idiot savant”. They were half right.
I did comment on something here quite recently that they reckon 100 times 0% is 100%. Trouble is, I thought I was joking.
Of course they understand basic arithmetic. They just know their supporters don’t.
He is 100% wrong. And I am gobsmacked at the ignorance.
Using Spray Tan Sociopath’s (AKA Trump’s) version of arithmetic, he is 666% wrong.
My reflexive response to first hearing DJT speak of price reductions greater than 100% was that he was converting “X-fold factor” changes (whether increases or decreases) into “X hundred %” changes, when that conversion is valid only for increases. This seems plausible to me, though it obviously is evidence of innumeracy when applied to decreases.
If DJT had simply limited his language to “X-fold” reduction, no-one would have noticed. Maybe he likes the language of percentages because, when mis-calculated the way I suspect he is doing, it sounds “bigger”. This isn’t to defend the man, but to try to understand where the language is coming from.
Amusingly, if this is what DJT is doing, then RFK, in that quote, is also innumerate. $600 to $10 is 60-fold, which in DJT-speak would be 6000%, not 600%, reduction.
With Trump, you know without looking where the language is from. And it ain’t his mouth; it’s another orifice.
A few additional thoughts:
I think RFK may have been closer to the truth if he had affirmed something along the lines of “DJT has his own understanding of the meaning of terms such as ‘percentages’. ”
I think it’s entirely possible that DJT knows what he means when he asserts that a price is “reduced by 600%”. The above hypothesis is that the train of meaning might be along the lines of “600% is a factor of six, so it is valid, when speaking of reducing a price by a factor of six (i.e., to one-sixth its original price), to use the phrase “reduced by 600%”. It’s terrible math, but it does have a sort of logic to it.
IOW, DJT could have a coherent, intelligible understanding of what he is saying, but he is using the wrong words (in terms of accepted usage) to express what he means.
“Illiterate” means “cannot read”. “Innumerate” means “cannot grasp numerical concepts”. Is there a term for “cannot express meanings in language that accurately conveys the meanings to others”.
It may be an aspect of the narcissism that is widely perceived to be a core aspect of his personality that he doesn’t feel a need to use terms in their customarily accepted senses. Words mean what they mean to him.
The disturbing thought occurs that “reduced by 600%” as meaning “reduced to 1/6th” could become “good English” if it were to become accepted usage. Another thing broken by an historically consequential person.
Perhaps this is an alternative or supplementary take on the meme “take Trump seriously, but not literally.”
Again, not suggesting this as a defense, but in an effort to understand “what is going on in his head.” Perhaps it’s a pointless effort, but it seems to matter, since for the time being he occupies an office of great power, and he seems to still be exercising that power.
“Saying the president has his own unique method of calculating percentages.” is probably the most truthful statement to come out of anyone in this administration.
It’s certainly a polite way to say “guy has lost his marbles.” / ;)
Captain Queeg begs to differ. :)
ha!
How many times has Trump gone bankrupt? We may have found one of the reasons.
The thing is, if he actually DID lower the price of a medicine from $600 to $10, if real that would be an incredible accomplishment and he can say whatever nonsensical percentages he wants, he actually delivered real material benefits. But it sounds from the video clip that he’s just talking theoretically, and the examples prove that the prices are anything but cheap.
“theoretically“? That’s some euphemism!
RFK jr created a stellar record as a fighter for clean waterways and going after polluters. When he signed off on T granting immunity to some of the worst polluters I thought, “boy, RFK jr sure rolled over fast.” /smh
Some blame for the high use over overpriced branded drugs vs generics is down to medical people. Every time I am told to take Tylenol, I respond with “Do you mean acetominophen?”. That’s paracetamol in UK. The respond with a hesitant yes, but have no response when I ask why they are promoting brand name rather than cheaper and identical generic.
Yes, I understand that generics have complicated names, but handouts that people can take to the pharmacy with the brand names and the generic names would fix that.
The boxes on acetaminophen $VARIANT will virtually always say “Compare to Tylenol $VARIANT”.
Not just Trump. Listen carefully to anyone who is practicing verbal waterboarding while they have the floor, microphone, and Flood The Zone.
When I hear run-on sentence pontificating blather like, “….its 15, 25, 40 percent…” I cringe.
I then discount, and put the speaker into the Heavily Suspect column of my pigeon- hole coop of bird-brains.
It does help make sense of Trump’s claims to have won every election ever by huge margins.